1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to pretzels, and in particular to an extruded three loop pretzel having a twist-knot appearance at its middle portion, apparatus and die for making such an extruded pretzel, and a process for making such an extruded pretzel.
2. Brief Description of the Prior Art
Early on, a twisted pretzel was traditionally formed by rolling pretzel dough into a pretzel dough rope and then manually twisting and folding the pretzel dough rope over and on itself to create a twisted pretzel. This early on process of making hand made pretzels was very labor intensive.
Later on, various pretzel forming equipment was created to reduce the labor intensiveness associated with forming twisted pretzels by hand while maintaining the twisted pretzel look of the hand made traditionally formed old fashion pretzel, the twist-knot portion of the old fashion pretzel contributing to the appeal and charm of the old fashion pretzel. For example, a pretzel twisting machine, developed by AMF, for forming twisted pretzels, using pretzel dough which has been rolled into a pretzel dough rope, twists the pretzel dough rope and folds the pretzel dough rope over onto itself to create a pretzel having a twisted pretzel configuration. Specifically, the middle portion of the pretzel dough rope is blocked from moving, and the end pieces of the pretzel dough rope are engaged by grippers, which move to simulate the twisting and folding motions used by bakers when forming twisted pretzels by hand, to form a machine made twisted pretzel. More recent pretzel twisting machines include those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,955,118 and 5,494,428, both of which are incorporated herein by reference. However, while pretzel twisting machines greatly increase the production rate of producing pretzels over the production rate for making pretzels by hand, pretzel twisting machines are somewhat complicated and subject to mechanical breakdown, thereby creating maintenance problems. Also, pretzels produced using pretzel twisting machines are subject to high breakage during production and packaging. Further, producing pretzels using a pretzel twisting machine often requires personnel to manually feed pretzel dough into the system and to watch over the system as pretzels are being formed by the pretzel twisting machines to make sure that the twisted pretzels are being properly produced.
Extruders are often used in the production of pretzels. For instance, in some cases, an extruder is used to form pretzel dough ropes, which are then fed to a pretzel twisting machine to be twisted and folded into twisted pretzels when making either hard twisted pretzels or soft twisted pretzels. In other cases, an extruder is used to form non-twisted pretzels, such as pretzel sticks, waffle-shaped pretzels, and three looped pretzels (often referred to as “minis”) which look like twisted pretzels except that they lack the overlapping portions a pretzel made using a pretzel twisting machine would have.